Eternal Sunshine of an Ignorant Mind
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
The boy who liked boobs
Of all the things that a 9 year old boy may possibly come to like, Jonathan Fernandes liked boobs. That's what he called them, boobs. He had stubmled upon the term online.
On his 9th birthday, Jon's father bought him an expensive camera. The parent's wish was to let his son discover the joys of paper memories at an early age, so as to avoid regret later on in life, the gaps that derail instrospection and enforce the need for analysis. The first picture that Jon took was of his aquarium. From then on, it was all about boobs.
When he started out, he used the term balls. He took the camera to his school and took pictures of his teachers, neck down. Later when they asked for the photographs, he said he lost them. One of the teachers called his mother and asked her to teach him the value of carefulness. She beat him with a belt.
A grown man, if he wants to photograph a woman's chest without her head in the picture, needs to point the camera down, making it impossible to accomplish the task without raising suspicion-levels. Jon needed to point the camera up to include the woman's face, so he could stop and zoom and focus just below it. Unike his friends, Jon never wished to be tall. Never.
Everyone posed. The teachers, the women in the neighborhood, his mom's friends, his friend's moms, his mom, his grandmother, that awfully sweet salesperson at the mall, his friend's sisters, his girl-friends, the maid, unknown women in parks, known women on streets, women he wished would never leave, women he wished he never met, small, big, thin, obese, confident, nervous, women in dresses, women in sarees, in velvet tops, in cotton shirts, happy women, sad women, women whom his mother disliked beacause they were worse, women whom his mother disked because they were better, girls who called him brother, women who called him son, his father's friend's wives, their daughters and pretty much everyone who would pose was made to and brief checkpoints were made in the time space continuum occupied by varities of bodies.
Once he took these pictures, Jon connected the camera to his computer, downloaded the images and hid them in a multitude of folders. It was manifold destiny, unfolded through singular realities. He deleted the pictures of balls from the camera, leaving behind the ones which, additionally, included other parts of the body.
Once he was playing an online game when he saw a photo he wished he had taken, and a few hyperlinks later, he found the accepted and acceptable terminology. Boobs, then.
The word sounded playful to him. He rolled it in his mouth, the way his dad rolled single malt, using his tongue to heave it from one side to the other, all the while resisting the temptation to gulp it down. He pronounced it in different ways: boooooobs, bubs, bobs, boobz, bewbs, boos, woobs and bawbs before finally settling on a hybrid between boooobz and beubs. The word assumed form and tickled him.
Slowly he began noticing the amount of importance other people laid on what was - to be fair - his discovery, his little secret, like Korean movies are to a film school student. He started noticing men staring at the female chest a lot more often than mere need would explain, and women, on their part, surprisingly, started wearing clothes that outlined their boobs with greater clarity. To be honest, Jon felt a little cheated. His little secret wasn't much of a secret after all. It seemed to him that much of what happened in daily life originated from, revolved around or rested upon boobs. From feeling like a kid who chances upon an undiscovered treasure, he started feeling like a kid who arrives at a birthday party to find that the cake has already been cut.
On one such day of young, ripe remorse, Jon switched on his computer and deleted the folder that contained all the photos that he had ever clicked. From that day onwards, when people asked for the photos he had clicked, Jonathan Fernandes never said he lost them.
On his 9th birthday, Jon's father bought him an expensive camera. The parent's wish was to let his son discover the joys of paper memories at an early age, so as to avoid regret later on in life, the gaps that derail instrospection and enforce the need for analysis. The first picture that Jon took was of his aquarium. From then on, it was all about boobs.
When he started out, he used the term balls. He took the camera to his school and took pictures of his teachers, neck down. Later when they asked for the photographs, he said he lost them. One of the teachers called his mother and asked her to teach him the value of carefulness. She beat him with a belt.
A grown man, if he wants to photograph a woman's chest without her head in the picture, needs to point the camera down, making it impossible to accomplish the task without raising suspicion-levels. Jon needed to point the camera up to include the woman's face, so he could stop and zoom and focus just below it. Unike his friends, Jon never wished to be tall. Never.
Everyone posed. The teachers, the women in the neighborhood, his mom's friends, his friend's moms, his mom, his grandmother, that awfully sweet salesperson at the mall, his friend's sisters, his girl-friends, the maid, unknown women in parks, known women on streets, women he wished would never leave, women he wished he never met, small, big, thin, obese, confident, nervous, women in dresses, women in sarees, in velvet tops, in cotton shirts, happy women, sad women, women whom his mother disliked beacause they were worse, women whom his mother disked because they were better, girls who called him brother, women who called him son, his father's friend's wives, their daughters and pretty much everyone who would pose was made to and brief checkpoints were made in the time space continuum occupied by varities of bodies.
Once he took these pictures, Jon connected the camera to his computer, downloaded the images and hid them in a multitude of folders. It was manifold destiny, unfolded through singular realities. He deleted the pictures of balls from the camera, leaving behind the ones which, additionally, included other parts of the body.
Once he was playing an online game when he saw a photo he wished he had taken, and a few hyperlinks later, he found the accepted and acceptable terminology. Boobs, then.
The word sounded playful to him. He rolled it in his mouth, the way his dad rolled single malt, using his tongue to heave it from one side to the other, all the while resisting the temptation to gulp it down. He pronounced it in different ways: boooooobs, bubs, bobs, boobz, bewbs, boos, woobs and bawbs before finally settling on a hybrid between boooobz and beubs. The word assumed form and tickled him.
Slowly he began noticing the amount of importance other people laid on what was - to be fair - his discovery, his little secret, like Korean movies are to a film school student. He started noticing men staring at the female chest a lot more often than mere need would explain, and women, on their part, surprisingly, started wearing clothes that outlined their boobs with greater clarity. To be honest, Jon felt a little cheated. His little secret wasn't much of a secret after all. It seemed to him that much of what happened in daily life originated from, revolved around or rested upon boobs. From feeling like a kid who chances upon an undiscovered treasure, he started feeling like a kid who arrives at a birthday party to find that the cake has already been cut.
On one such day of young, ripe remorse, Jon switched on his computer and deleted the folder that contained all the photos that he had ever clicked. From that day onwards, when people asked for the photos he had clicked, Jonathan Fernandes never said he lost them.
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